HeidiRange has tried out the tartan trend.
The singer, 30, attended a launch party held at Nobu in London last night with Zoe Hardman and Lydia Bright wearing a pretty plaid skirt.SugababeHeidi tucked a long-sleeved white shirt into her red high-waisted kilt and accessorised with a glitzy statement necklace.
A number of celebrities have been snapped rocking cool checked pieces in recent weeks.Mollie King hit a swanky London dinner party in a patterned two-piece after Miranda Kerr styled a Highlands-inspired jacket with leather shorts in Paris.

Tuesday, 29 October 2013

MKS on Channel 4 Sunday Brunch were talking about briefly about their past and their plans for the future. They said they chose the name MKS so there can be no line up changes and that people know that it's Mutya Keisha and Siobhan. They also revealed that Keisha had got in contact with Mutya and Siobhan as soon as she left the Sugababes. They took baby steps to see if they could work together again and sort out their differences to which they have done.They will be on tour around the uk this is steve taylor reporting for catching my eye news . Thanks to stevetaylor berrabah ‏@stevetaylofor providing the report and video cap from the TV

Henry Winkler is so ingrained in the public’s conscience as the Fonz that casting the same role in a musical version of Happy Days was always going to present a challenge.

As well as being able to sing, dance and act, anyone playing the Fonz – perhaps crucially – needs to be cool, too. Often all at the same time.
Step forward Ben Freeman – a man who, according to producer Amy Anzel, fulfilled this brief, and fended off some stiff competition from other well-known talent to land the part in the forthcoming tour of the musical.
If this is the case, however, no one told Freeman, who seems flattered to learn what he achieved. And, if we’re honest, a little daunted by the idea that the Fonz is required to dance.
“They have not mentioned dancing yet,” he laughs. “I’ve had singing lessons, and acting is something I’ve always done. But dancing is one of those thing you can’t pretend to do when you can’t do it. I would never go up for a job that is predominantly dance-based. Singing with a little bit of dance is perfect for me.”
Hearing this, you can’t help wonder whether Freeman has somehow missed – or is putting out of his mind – the fact that Happy Days is being directed and choreographed by Andrew Wright, the man behind the dancing in recent productions of Singin’ in the Rain and Barnum. There’s just no way that catchy moves and big dance breaks are not going to feature heavily in this production.
Still, perhaps Freeman is just downplaying his skills a little. Because, as has already been established, he was the one performer auditioned who was able to “do cool” along with everything else required.
Not that Freeman – and in this isn’t meant as an insult – is particularly cool. Which, it has to be said, is something of a revelation.
Perhaps it’s because of the way the press has portrayed him (more of which later) or the fact he played Scott Windsor in Emmerdale for so many years, that you expect him to be a tad cocky, arrogant even. The truth, however, is that he’s a little shy, a bit jittery and as far removed from the Fonz as is imaginable.
So what can people expect from his portrayal of this iconic character?

Ben Freeman and Carley Stenson in Legally Blonde. Photo: Ellie Kurttz

“I assume a lot of people will have seen Happy Days before, and will have a clear idea of what they want to see, or expect to see,” he says. “But I have never pretended to be anything like the Fonz. I am certainly not as cool as him. I am going to have to bring something of my own to the role, but I don’t want to neglect what Henry brought to it.”
He adds: “The Fonz is someone who everyone wants to be friends with, he’s funny and charming and at ease with everything. That has to come in to it, otherwise you are missing the point. But I can’t do a bad interpretation of Henry. That would be awful. I have to give myself freedom to do what I want to do, otherwise I’d be shackled by this huge role.”
Although many coming to Happy Days will know the TV series on which the musical is based, there will be plenty who see it without any prior knowledge of the programme. Many will be musical theatre fans, attracted by the prospect of a show featuring brand new songs. Others may well be lured in by the show’s celebrity casting, including Freeman, Sugababes singer Heidi Range as Pinky Tuscadero, and Cheryl Baker as Mrs Cunningham. Range is new to musicals, but both Freeman and Baker have appeared in them before.
Freeman, whose background is predominantly in television, started popping up in musicals in 2009, playing Norman in Dreamboats and Petticoats, before moving on to appear in Legally Blonde and Wicked, where he is currently appearing as Fiyero.
When he started appearing in them, Freeman says eyebrows were raised – mainly because he had never formally trained and was best known for being on TV in Grange Hill and Emmerdale. Both of these, he says, gave people reason to be slightly resentful of his leading man status.
He shrugs this off, saying: “I may not have trained but I worked really hard to do musicals. I didn’t just think ‘I’ll try my luck at that’. Initially I got rebuffed a few times with producers and casting directors telling me I had to have singing lessons.”
He adds: “If you have the right attitude, you can do most things you want to do. If I wanted to go to the Royal Shakespeare Company and study Shakespeare – if I worked hard and then got a job there, then fair enough. I’d have done the hard graft.”
Here Freeman expands on his first experiences of auditioning for musicals. He reveals he first went up for a part in Wicked five years ago, but didn’t get a second audition. “After that, I thought, ‘I am going to try hard’,” he says, revealing that he set about having more singing lessons.
“When four or five big casting directors say, ‘You’re alright, but you don’t sound like the people who have trained’, you listen. They would say, ‘I quite like your voice but in among all those trained people you would stick out’. That’s when I realised I needed to do more singing.”
And clearly these lessons paid off, as Freeman has made theatre a home for himself over the last four years. Something he is very grateful for, considering that in 2006 he thought his acting career was dead. At that time, Freeman was accused of raping a 16-year-old girl. He was cleared two years later, by which time his contract with Emmerdale had come to an end and had not been renewed.
Despite having cleared his name, he knew that he would have to work hard to stay in showbusiness.
“That was another reason I decided to try something different [theatre],” he says. “It was difficult to get work and people had to take a chance on me. I knew if one person did, the others would say, ‘It’s fine, he’s working now’. But at the beginning everyone was a bit dubious about what the reaction would be from their fan base – whether television or theatre. It was tough. I had to find a way in.”
He says he went from being “near the top of the heap casting wise” on TV to having to prove himself and his talent to the theatre industry. And he adds he is “eternally grateful” for the opportunities that have come his way in theatre – an industry he’s admired since he was six years old and taken to see Michael Crawford in The Phantom of the Opera. This experience, he says, sparked a love of musical theatre that has never waned.
Freeman says that theatre, from a performer’s perspective, feels less “monotonous” than being in a TV soap, because “every show is different” – be that audience reaction, or the interaction between cast members. He also enjoys the lower level of fame that comes with being in a theatre production compared with TV. He says that once he has stopped signing autographs outside of the Apollo, Victoria, which is home to Wicked, he can “go back to being anonymous again”.
“It’s a nice amount of recognition, and as soon as you walk away you’re anonymous,” he says. “Unless you’re hugely famous, which I’m not.”
That said, he still finds the press interested in him and his personal life, a result of becoming a household name from his days in television. In March, newspapers ran stories about his personal life that reminded him of the horrors of press intrusion.
“You just want to do your job regardless of whatever else is going on, but that is not enough,” he says. “The press want to get you when you’re vulnerable and sell stories about you. It’s tough, especially when they drag your friends in to it too. You get phone calls from friends saying they have just been contacted by journalists and that gets you down.”
Not that Freeman is down right now. With rehearsals for the tour of Happy Days set to begin just two weeks after his 13-month stint in Wicked comes to an end, Freeman is looking forward to a new challenge, a new role and making new friends in the show – a production that certainly seems to have generated a buzz.
“It’s nice to know a show I am doing has such a following,” he says, adding: “I am lucky. I don’t know what it is. I’m just lucky.”Happy Days opens at the Churchill Theatre in Bromley on January 11, 2014 and tours until JulyBen Freeman will also appear as part of Wicked Cares, a charity event taking place at the St James Theatre on October 6

About Me

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The Jade Ewen Story so far...

Jade Almarie Louise Ewen (born 24 January 1988) is an English singer, songwriter, actress and member of the Sugababes. Ewen began her singing career in the girl group Trinity Stone signed to Sony BMG in 2005, but they disbanded in 2007 with no album released. In 2009, she represented the UK at the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest performing the Andrew Lloyd Webber / Diane Warren penned "It's My Time" after winning the UK national selection. She achieved 5th place, cementing her as the most successful British Eurovision act since 2002. She replaced Keisha Buchanan in the Sugababes in September 2009, while at the time still signed to Polydor Records.

Ewen was born and brought up in Plaistow, London, to a Jamaican mother, Carol and a Scottish-Sicilian father, Trevor. Trevor is blind and partially deaf, while Carol is partially blind. Ewen was a carer to both her parents and two younger siblings, Shereen and Kiel.She received a scholarship to the Sylvia Young Theatre School. As a student at Sylvia, she appeared in The Bill, Casualty and Mr. Harvey Lights a Candle.Ewen also won the part of Nala in The Lion King at the West End at the age of twelve. Ewen appeared in the children's dance DVD, entitled How To Dance. She also featured briefly in the video for pop rock band Busted's "What I Go to School For".

Between 2003 and 2004 she appeared in the Australian series Out There. In 2005, Ewen became a member of the girl group Trinity Stone which was signed to Sony BMG. The group disbanded in 2007. She later recorded with rapper Kwamé, who was impressed with her work on MySpace. She released a digital single, "Got You" in 2008 under Kwame's Make Noise label. Ewen co-wrote the song "A Little Bit" for the girl group Booty Luv and also "Let Me Be Me" for Jessica Mauboy. In early 2009, Ewen acted in the first episode of the series, Myths.

In January 2009, Ewen was approached and participated in the UK national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest 2009. She was eventually selected to represent the UK with the song "It's My Time" composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber who accompanied her on piano onstage. Ewen was signed with Polydor Records in February and began working on her debut album. In May Ewen finished in fifth place, the highest placing for the United Kingdom since 2002.

In September 2009, it was announced that Ewen had joined the Sugababes as the replacement for Keisha Buchanan.While her second single, "My Man" had been released in the same week, promotional activities for the single were cancelled. Although the single still managed to reach #35 in the charts. In an interview with the BBC, Ewen confirmed her commitment to the Sugababes as her main priority and that her solo album was put on hold. "About a Girl" later debuted at number eight in the UK. Sweet 7 was released in early 2010 after multiple delays from late 2009, and charted at #14 on the UK albums chart. In late 2010 Jade was revealed as the new face of Miss Ultimo lingerie, modelling the lingerie fashion lines Autumn/Winter collection for 2010.

A Brief History of The Sugababes

Sugababes are an English pop girl group based in London, consisting of members Heidi Range, Amelle Berrabah and Jade Ewen. The Guinness Book of World Records have named the Sugababes as the most successful female act of the 21st century with six UK number one singles and eighteen UK top ten hits.

Sugababes were formed in 1998 by founding members Siobhán Donaghy, Mutya Buena and Keisha Buchanan. In 2001, after just one album and some initial success, Donaghy departed and the introduction of Range in the same year was met with the commercial success. The group survived a second line-up change in December 2005, when Buena left the band and was subsequently replaced by Berrabah. In September 2009, it was confirmed that after eleven years in the band, Buchanan was no longer part of the group and had been replaced by Jade Ewen.